Romney increases overtures to disenchanted evangelicals
WASHINGTON - Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has stepped up his efforts to woo evangelicals in response to the threat by some Christian conservative leaders to back a third-party candidate.
The third-party threat grew yesterday after a key evangelical leader, James Dobson, said that he and other social conservatives had agreed to support a "minor party" candidate if the Republicans choose a presidential nominee who is not conservative enough.
Dobson's statement is viewed as significant in the Romney campaign because Dobson has ruled out supporting GOP candidates John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson, but has left open the possibility of supporting Romney.
"Dr. Dobson is keeping an open mind on Mitt Romney, and I think that is because they do share in common so many values," Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said yesterday.
Dobson, the leader of the high-profile Focus on the Family, whose radio program has 1.5 million listeners, did not respond to a request for comment yesterday.
Romney has sought for more than a year to convince evangelicals that they should support him despite their concerns about his Mormon faith, which many evan gelicals see as a non-Christian religion, and his past support for abortion rights and some forms of gay rights.
The leaders of major evangelical groups have been respectful but noncommittal. Increasingly, however, Romney has benefited from the battering that his main opponents have taken from evangelicals.
For much of the summer, some Christian conservatives expressed hope that Thompson would emerge as their candidate, but Dobson recently issued a scathing denunciation of the Tennessean for both his failure to support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and his ineffectiveness on the stump.
Romney, meanwhile, has increased his efforts to convince evangelicals that he should be their candidate. Last Friday, Romney met privately in Salt Lake City with approximately 200 members of a powerful group called the Council on National Policy, to which Dobson belongs. Aides said Romney assured the group that his conversion to being an abortion opponent is complete and that he supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He also fielded questions about Mormonism.
A day after Romney met with the council, a subgroup of 50 Christian conservatives headed by Dobson issued a statement saying they would back a minor-party candidate if Republicans nominated someone with whom they disagreed on issues such as abortion. The statement was widely viewed as an assault on Giuliani, the leader in many national polls, who favors abortion rights.
A revolt by social conservatives would be a devastating blow to the current field of Republican candidates, because it could dampen the turnout in the primaries and possibly siphon off Republican votes to provide the margin of victory to Democrats in the general election.
The Romney campaign insists he is the one major GOP candidate who can keep evangelicals in the GOP fold, despite the doctrinal differences between conservative Protestants and Mormons.
Dobson and Romney "may not agree on theology, but they share in common values like protecting the sanctity of life," Fehrnstrom said.
The other candidates criticized by Dobson have said that his attacks are unfair, and that they are confident they can win evangelical support.
In addition to attacking Thompson's desire to leave gay marriage to the states, Dobson has questioned whether the former Tennessee senator is a committed Christian.
Thompson responded on Fox News on Wednesday, saying of Dobson: "I don't particularly care to have a conversation with him. . . . I'm not going to dance to anybody's tune."
Dobson also has said he has "moral concerns" about Giuliani, who favors abortion rights and has been married three times.
"I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008," Dobson wrote earlier this year.
He also has said, "I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances."
McCain has criticized some religious right leaders for being too intolerant.
In October 2006, Dobson cast doubt on a Romney candidacy, saying, "I don't believe that conservative Christians in large numbers will vote for a Mormon."
Since then, however, Dobson has met privately with Romney and softened his tone. He said earlier this year that Romney is "very presidential, and he's got the right answers to many, many things."
Despite the number of influential evangelicals backing Dobson's threat to support a minor-party candidate, many other evangelical leaders feel that abandoning the GOP would do little for their cause.
Gary Bauer, a chairman of Campaign for Working Families, a conservative political action committee, who participated in the Salt Lake City meeting by telephone, said backing a third-party candidate "would do nothing other than deliver the White House on a silver platter" to Democrats.
Bauer said he could even see evangelicals backing Giuliani if he took steps to reassure them.
Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said in an interview yesterday that he agrees with Dobson about the need for a third-party candidacy if Giuliani becomes the Republican nominee. But he said he could support other leading Republican candidates.
Regarding Romney, Land said, most evangelicals believe Mormonism is not a Christian faith.
"But that doesn't mean they wouldn't vote for him," he said.
Last year, Land urged Romney to deliver a speech about his Mormonism, just as John F. Kennedy delivered a famous speech in 1960 in which he said he would not take orders from the Pope.
Land said he told Romney: "You can close that deal. You need to do what John Kennedy did, you need to defend the right to run."
Land said he thinks it's a mistake that Romney hasn't delivered Kennedy-like address. Romney's aides have said he is still considering whether to give such a speech.
Evangelicals account for up to 45 percent of the GOP primary electorate in some Southern states, according to John Green, senior fellow with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Policy. While Dobson's influence is hard to estimate, Green noted that Dobson is perceived as a key leader. At the very least, Dobson's comments are "a negative for the candidates he has criticized," Green said.
All four leading Republican candidates have struggled with questions about faith.
McCain, a Baptist, played down his religion in 2000 and dismissed the Rev. Jerry Falwell as an "agent of intolerance." But as McCain entered the 2008 race, he courted religious conservatives and appeared with Falwell, who died last May.
Thompson has acknowledged that he doesn't attend church regularly. Giuliani, a Catholic, this week was criticized by a St. Louis Archbishop who said the former New York mayor should not receive Holy Communion as a result of support for abortion rights.
Some other candidates, such as former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, are well liked by some Christian conservative leaders, but they have struggled to gain support in national polls. 